Please… DON’T PANIC!

Angela and Scott were live on their Video Power Up Facebook Page, where they shared their perspective on Facebook’s upcoming algorithm changes to organic reach on your page posts.

Transcription:

Scott: You connect it to WiFi?

Angela: Good morning. Good morning everyone. We are live here on Tuesday, February ... February? January 16th, and back from Mexico. We were in Mexico. We missed you guys all last week. We were in Mexico doing some filming, but also have some R&R. And while we were gone, we learned some interesting stuff about Facebook that we're going to talk about today.

Scott: Yeah, when I got back, I got some ... actually I think it was when I was away. Yeah, we were away and I got a message from Katie, and Katie was asking me about some of the upcoming changes to Facebook's algorithm, which will affect the organic reach of videos, prerecorded videos, but also posts in general. And I honestly, I had no idea what she was talking about. And-

Angela: For businesses. Yeah. Sorry.

Scott: I think pages in general.

Angela: Yeah.

Scott: Yeah, no, I think absolutely pages in general, which are typically businesses.

Angela: Yeah. Sorry, I through you off.

Scott: So I started digging around online and actually I couldn't find anything right away. I think people were still reacting to the news, but when we got home and found a letter from Mark Zuckerberg. And I'm going to include a link when I stop talking. But I'll include a link in the comments below too, that letter from Mark Zuckerberg which explains these changes and why they're making these changes. So that was the letter, and I think there's a lot of small business owners that are really, really concerned about how this is going to effect them and how it's going to effect their posts and their reach.

And you know, we've done a lot of research since then, a lot this morning, listening to what the pros are saying about this. And my personal opinion is ... Hey Kim. My personal opinion is there's absolutely no reason to panic. There's a lot in this news that, it actually works in our favor as small business owners, and as experts or people who put themselves on camera, which is most of the people who follow us and are a part of our program. No, it's about you, yourself out there and making connections with people and having relationships with people and building a community. So these changes, I believe are actually going to work in our favor.

So did you want to ... Oh, so I'm going to highlight ... there's a couple quotes right from the letter that I just want to highlight, because this is what a lot of people were panicking about. The first quote is, he said, "It's a major change to how we build Facebook." So it's going to be a big change on their end. And they're going to roll it over the next few months. So it's not really ... it's not rolled out yet. But you're going to see changes, for sure.

Here's the other quote. "You'll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and the media." That's where people started to freak out a bit. And this is where other people were getting upset. The other quote was, "Some measures of engagement will go down." So those are the three major quotes that ... actually, I got this article from Digital Marketer, and these are the quotes he pulled out. But I thought it was a great way of just sort of communicating very quickly what this long letter was really about and why people are getting really nervous about that. So that's the letter, and-

Angela: Can I mention a couple other things in the-

Scott: Absolutely.

Angela: So and that's why ... sorry, I know I keep looking away from the camera, but I've got the letter in front of me, and he says, "We're making major changes to how we build Facebook, but it's going to take months for this new focus to make its way through all our products. The first change you're going to see is in the newsfeed and you can expect to see more from your friends, family, and groups."

Scott: Yeah.

Angela: So I thought that was interesting. Hey, Amanda. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but Amanda is live with us, and she's all the way in Guatemala.

Scott: Oh yeah, Amanda.

Angela: I want to give a special shout out to Amanda who's doing some really good work down there helping children and families and doing ... she's not there on vacation this time. She's actually there working her butt off and she's raised a lot of money.

Scott: We couldn't make this year. We really wanted to go, but we were unable to make it this year, so we had to work. Poor us. We had to work and where were we?

Angela: Cozumel.

Scott: Cozumel.

Angela: But I just want to send a special shout out to Amanda. Thanks for joining us today. I know you've got lots to do with your volunteer work down there, so.

Scott: So you do bring up a good point about this letter, and I think that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, they've recognized that there's a lot of articles and information coming out about the negative experiences on Facebook that people are having and that people are spending too much time on there. There's a lot of negative news coming out right now on social media, on Facebook, and I think Mark Zuckerberg's very smart. I think his team is very smart, and I think they know that they need to make some changes now so they're still in the game in like five years, even if it's going to effect the money that they're going to earn.

We were just talking about it this morning, Facebook stock dropped 5% upon news of this, because people know that if they're going to take more advertising out of your newsfeed, it means that they're going to make less money, their stockholders are going to make less money.

Angela: Sorry, Amanda's just saying she can't hear anything.

Scott: That's too bad, yeah.

Angela: Yeah, and I think it's actually, you know, we're going to sum up with that. But I think we'll see, right? We'll see. Are they are going to make less money, or is it just going to cost us a little more?

Scott: Yes. Oh, I think in the long run, that's what I think. I think in the short term Facebook's going to make less money, but in the long run, they're going to have a better product that people are actually going to want to use. And in the long run they're going to make more money.

Angela: Yeah, and the other thing I want to bring up too, is this letter is kind of an official letter from Mark Zuckerberg. It's an official statement, but we've been seeing unpaid posts and engagement. Well posts really, and that, go down over the last couple years. But over the last two years, if you posted something to your page, then the chances are really good the people who like your page will see it, right? And then they introduced a thing where you could hide posts from pages, right? So you didn't get so much of that in your newsfeed. You had the option of hiding those posts.

And I don't know if you guys remember, but there was a time when we were asking people, "Hey, make sure you prioritize my post. Make sure you've got your settings so you get my newsfeed for my business page." Do you remember that ...

Scott: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Angela: ... when that happened? So this is just another measure. It's just another level of that, and I think adjusting and knowing how to adjust is going to be really important.

Scott: Yeah, the one, the statistic I'll give on that is that most recently if someone likes your Facebook page and you post a video or any type of post on your Facebook page, the odds of that getting to one of your followers is 3 to 5%. It's very, very low. And that's been happening very, very slowly. And it sounds like they're pretty much ... I think what they're going to do is take it away entirely. If you want to get on people's newsfeed, you're going to have to pay, pay to play. And we always recommend, we've always said this from the beginning since the organic reach has been declining to 3 to 5%, spend the money.

The beauty about being a small business owner, I think, and having a target audience ... we always talk about target audience, knowing exactly who your target audience, what's their age, geographic region, and then when you're boosting those posts, you're spending those five bucks focusing that money on that very, very specific group of people. I believe that's the way to do it. And that, from what we've read, isn't going to change. Paid posts are not going to change. As small business owners, like I said, if you can really focus in on that target market, you don't need to spend a lot of money to keep your videos, to keep your posts in people's newsfeeds.

Angela: Yeah, and we're going to talk about pages, so your business page, versus groups in a bit. But the other thing I want to mention, too, is I don't think it's even been more important not to have tons of followers on your page, but to have engaged followers, so people who really are interested in your subject. We need to stop reaching out and say, "Everyone like my page," and asking your friends and family to like your page, because that's when you build a disengaged audience. I would rather you have 100 people like your page and 90 of them be interested in your subject and be engaged, than you have 10,000 people on your page and 5,000 be engaged, right?

The numbers game isn't how many people like your page. It's how many people who are interested in your service, who you can use your page to reach out and help, not sell to all the time, but actually engage with them and help them. Right? It's not about having the most number of likes on your page.

So I don't know if ... how can I ... It's like, you want to have friends, right? You want to have friends, you want to have lots of friends in life. I'm not talking about Facebook anymore. But your best friends are who you spend your time with. They're the ones who you reach out to and who reach out to you. That's how you want to think of your business page, is you really want your best clients, your best prospects, even if they're not clients, that you can make relationship with in some way, that you connect with in some way, not just have thousands and thousands of followers. Does that make sense?

Scott: Yeah. No, that makes sense.

Angela: Because it's not ... you want to build an engaged audience, not just a big audience.

Scott: I think I know what you're saying. And are you talking about the types of posts?

Angela: No, I'm talking about, in the past, people have reached out to anyone to like their page because they think it's a numbers game.

Scott: Right.

Angela: The numbers game is fast, as we've read from this, becoming less about how many people like your page and more about how many people are engaged with you there.

Scott: Okay.

Angela: And so don't worry about getting tons of followers and likes on your business page. Worry about engaging with the people you already have. In fact, you might want to cut out some of the people who aren't engaging on your page. That's all I'm saying, is because the name of the game is engagement. It's about building a community, right? And I read it, actually Ryan Deiss said it. It's not about building your brand, because Facebook, it's about building a community.

Scott: Yeah. No, absolutely. So maybe ... do you want to share ... you mentioned Ryan. There's a couple other pros who've commented on this, and I think it's important that everyone knows Angela and I are not social media experts. We do what we can. We try and stay on top of it. We are video producers, and working with video and marrying it with social media to really help small business owners. That's where our expertise lie. So we often turn to the social media experts. And I've got it here.

Angela: Do you?

Scott: Yeah.

Angela: Good, because I just lost it. I've got too many things open.

Scott: I'm going to put that in front of you, and I'm going to read this comment here.

Angela: Christine Hall says she agrees.

Scott: Oh.

Angela: I'm Angela by the way. I'm Angela, and this is Scott.

Scott: Yes.

Angela: Yes, thanks. Yeah, Christine. Scott was having a hard time following me, I could tell. He's also my husband, for those of you who don't know us. But I can tell by his expressions and all I was saying was it's no longer about the numbers on your page, it's about the community that you're building in the engagement. So you're better off dropping people that are not engaged with your page. And we'll talk about groups and pages later, but ... I'm touching your screen, Scott. Okay, so ...

Scott: So what else do we have there? Yeah. No, engagement is key. And Angie's right on and often Ang has her train of thought and I have my train of thought and I get so focused on algorithms. Like this morning, I'm trying to figure this algorithm, how that's going to play out. So what Ang is saying about engagement is absolutely key, and you want engaged followers. We've always said this to people. Don't pay for followers, whether on YouTube or Twitter. Don't pay for followers, because the algorithms know and they will figure that out and they will push your posts down in the feed. Are you reading that?

Angela: Yeah, do you know if this has any impact on how much engagement a post may get if it's scheduled or live posted? Hmm, good question.

Scott: It is a good question and I was going to get to this later. And no one really knows. Now I can only assume. Well, people do know, but you have to work at Facebook. There's so much that's going to happen with these algorithms. This has been happening to Google forever, that no one really knows how much is a share worth versus a like versus a heart. I don't think anyone really knows. You can only make assumptions, and you can't test and measure this stuff, because what they intentionally do, I know Google does this, is they'll constantly be changing he algorithm so you can never figure out what works and what doesn't work.

But in my opinion, I think a scheduled post versus a live post has the exact same weight. Now as far as a prerecorded video versus a live video, we don't know. And I think there may be a difference there on what takes a priority, because I still think that Facebook is favoring live video. So I don't know if that answers your question. Are you talking specifically about video, or just scheduled versus posted, but ...

Angela: Yeah, and again it's my opinion based on what I've read is, whether it's scheduled ... if you have a scheduled post that gets lots of engagement, that's going to be favored a live post that gets no engagement, because that's the name of the game, is engagement.

Scott: Yup.

Angela: Yeah.

Scott: Okay, so do you have any quotes there?

Angela: Yeah, Ryan Deiss again. He's one of my favorite digital marketers. He says, "Don't panic. Don't get angry, because this is happening to everybody." And I think that's important for us to know. We just need to modify what we're doing and how we're doing it.

Optimize for likes an shares, not clicks. Don't worry about making a sale. Be engaged. Invest in communities. Now, this is where I'm going to go here. Invest in communities like Facebook groups. So start, you know, you want ... we've got our pages and we've got groups. And I've gotten away from groups. I've really focused on my page. And so I need to look at groups again ...

Scott: Yeah. No, absolutely.

Angela: ... and creating an engaged group that people are going to come in and be engaged with and that I can help and that they can come to me for my expertise.

Scott: Yeah, and I was going to say with groups, in the past I've not been a big fan of groups, but knowing this is the direction that Facebook is going, we're definitely going to take a closer look at groups. I know there's been a lot of people that have been saying groups, groups, groups for the longest time and I didn't quite buy into it. But definitely now with these changes, I am going to take a closer look at that. Because if you want to build a community, you're not going to be able to build it on your page as much as you can with a Facebook group.

Angela: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I've got some other stuff here.

Scott: And then there's a couple questions. We should answer them after you [crosstalk 00:15:08].

Angela: Yeah, everyone's kind of saying the same thing. The announcement means that the need to build a true community on the Facebook platform is more valuable than ever. And we've been talking about this, we've been talking about, we teach people how to create marketing videos. These aren't sales videos. It's not about how you pitch your product or service. It's actually about how you can help your audience. Free, free, free valuable content. The more you can give, the more you can do, the more engaged they'll be, right? The more they'll be engaged with your group or your page. So I think it's more important than ever that that's true. I'm going to let you go ahead and answer some questions, because I don't want them to go ...

Scott: You've got my computer now. I have to scroll on my phone, so I'll get my finger up here. So Melissa ... hey Melissa, how are you? In a coaching group I'm in, we've seen scheduled posts go down when they are scheduled out more than a week in advance. Interesting. So my thought on that is, and I think that might be actually true, because I was talking the other day with someone about using applications like Hootsuite, and also Buffer. Facebook knows when you're using Hootsuite or Buffer, and I think that Facebook knows that it's marketers who tend to use those apps because they can hit multiple social media platforms at the same time.

So I think that maybe it is possible that if posts are being scheduled out weeks in advance, you're probably a marketer. So it may push those posts down. Whereas if you're scheduling a post for two hours time or for three days from now, it's quite possible that you're not a slick marketer, but you want to delay your post for whatever reason. Maybe it's associated with an upcoming event.

I think that's a great question, Melissa, but again, it gets back to what's going on behind the scenes with Facebook. But it sounds like you've tested and measured it and I think that's what's important. So if it's not working ... if you find you're getting less engagement by scheduling posts a couple weeks in advance, then you know, maybe don't. I don't know.

We've done scheduled, pre-scheduled video posts in the past, I think up to six weeks at one time. We were scheduling them six weeks out. And I didn't really notice an engagement difference. But these were two minute, short marketing videos. I'm not sure what posts you were ... I don't know if she says there. If they're just regular posts or video posts. But I think especially over the next three months, and I wouldn't spend too much time because everything's going to change so quickly I think with all this news. So if you figure something out in the next six weeks, that might not apply in three months time. So time will tell. We're going to have to wait.

Angela: Yeah, I'm going to give you this. The other thing is, by the things I've read, even though what they're trying to do is get more connect ... it sounds like Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, wants to connect more people. Realizing that may decrease the time people are spending on Facebook. That's kind of the paraphrasing of what I read. But, from what I read, the other thing is paid posts won't be effected.

Scott: Right.

Angela: So that kind of to me is a big contradictory, I guess. They want ... so to me, this, and I think that's why their shares, their stocks, not their Facebook shares, but their stocks, went down so quickly was because they had kind of said, "We're going to give less engagement to businesses and marketers and ads." But at the same time, there is some whispers out there that paid boosts and paid advertisements won't be affected. So which is it, right? I'm not sure.

Scott: Melissa brings up another point, too. I didn't go far enough back to see her other comment. But she saw in a Wired interview with Facebook's head of newsfeed, Adam, said that the metric for ranking will be based on length of comments and within comment replies. Totally agree. Absolutely agree. I think, you know, when we do our seminar or our webinar, we talk about, yeah, you can ask for likes, you can ask for shares, but I truly believe that you need to get a conversation started. Even what's already happening in this live video, there's definitely a comment thread. People are engaged. They're commenting. I know Facebook's going to push this up in the newsfeed.

I totally agree. I think, you know, I'm surprised that they're saying that this is kind of new. I've always felt that creating a conversation, the comment section below your video, below your post, is critical, so asking questions that engage people to respond. So I think that's a great tip for everyone, Melissa.

Angela: Yeah, and I'm really glad you're-

Scott: So thanks for bringing that up.

Angela: Yeah, I'm really glad you're in here, Melissa, because like Scott said, right, we're video marketers. So we specifically look at how that's going to be effected. And we will talk about that as well, but I love that we're getting other experts in here, because we do need to open a conversation for small businesses. Because we're a small business, we support small businesses. We need to know the best plan of attack on how to make sure that our content still is out there and is going to be relevant and is going to be sharable, right? It's really important for us. Do you have anything else there?

Scott: Yeah, so Lisa ... hey, Lisa. Lisa asks, "Is it worthwhile to have a group and a page? It seems like so much more work, and I live my page? Love my page." Unfortunately I don't have a straight answer for you, but I think yes. I think that you need a page to represent your business to show that you are a legitimate business. But I'm thinking, and Angela and I are going to spend some time talking about that.

We'll probably have a whole meeting on it, talking about, you know, because we have a private Facebook group for our members or our tribe, or you know, people who see value in our services and pay us for those services. We have a private group for them. But I think what we're going to have to do is create a Facebook group for people who are our followers or our other tribe.

And I think that what we're seeing is a shift, like you're going to have to try and move those people from your Facebook page. We have like, I don't even know how many we have, but say around 500 people on our Facebook page. We need to find a way to sort of get those people over to a group. I'm not saying we're going to do that. We really don't know. We really want to have that meeting.

But is it going to take more time? I think in the beginning it will be, but you should be able to once you get things going, is to share the post. And actually, what I'm going to look into is cross posting, because they may change that. Because in the past, you could cross post between two different pages and what you couldn't do is cross post. When I say cross post, I mean post on one page, but it automatically gets posted on a second page. And before you couldn't post on a page and have it automatically post on a group. That might change, it might not. And you cannot go live in a Facebook group as a business page.

Now, there's some experts in the room. Let me know if I'm wrong there, but I'm pretty sure that's the case. So that's where it's going to get tricky. So if you've got a page and a group, where do you go live? I mean you could go live on your page and then share that afterwards in your group, but then you're losing the engagement with the people that are in your group.

So anyway, I've got a lot of questions just like everyone else. So sorry Lisa, I don't have a better answer than that, but I think in the beginning yeah, you're going to need to start experimenting with groups. And it's going to take a little more time.

What else do we have here? We talked about paid posts probably won't change. We're at an advantage as small business owners. You know, with all the changes that are happening right now, the big businesses, this is really going to effect them. But it allows the small business owners to sort of get in through the cracks and stuff. There is ways, and I think we're all in a great position with these changes. We talked about the stock, live, we talked about the live ads.

So we've kind of covered everything we wanted to cover today. Is there anymore questions? If there's anymore questions, we'd love to answer them. And if not, we will wrap things up. I'm just going to refresh this page here. Oh yeah.

Angela: We got a few more comments. We're going to go there. So yeah, I think for now our advice, if I can sum it up, is don't worry about getting more likes on your page unless they're relevant. Be worried about engaging with the people that are on there. And I've always kind of said this, too. So in the past, we've said, "Post on your page and then share to your personal." And I think that's actually more relevant than ever now.

And I think some people are ... they want to divide their business life and their personal life, like their personal Facebook page is very ... almost is a different persona than their business page. And I think you need to look at being able to marry the two in a way that you can share your business posts to your personal page. Some people do, some people don't. Some people are really like uh. They really keep it separate. And I think it's more important now to be able to share things on your personal page from your business page about what you're doing.

Start those groups, get people in those groups. Don't put people in the groups who don't want to be. I think it's a pet peeve of most people. Just don't randomly add a bunch of people to a group. Invite them. Message them and say, "Hey, this is why I've added you," but don't just start adding people to groups because everybody's going to start doing that and then nobody ... people are going to not, they're going to leave the group just because you've done that even if they've might have been interested in what you were doing. So I want you to do that.

And whether you're doing a video post, and I want you to keep those who are doing your video posts. Keep doing them, making the focus engagement in conversation. So less about sharing, and more about engaging and having conversations.

Scott: Cool.

Angela: Do you have any other questions you want to ...

Scott: No, I think everyone's good. Everyone read the comments, because Melissa's got some good comments in there about what you can do as a business page with a group and what you can't. Sounds like you can go ... what did she say? I have to read it. You can go live as a business page in your group. So I'm going to experiment with some of that stuff, because I really need to figure that out. And we'll probably end up talking more about ... we'll probably do a whole live session on, you know, the core relation between a page and a group and how do you work your video both ways, what's the best way to do it. So read the comments for that stuff.

I got one more question here and then we should ... we're almost at 30 minutes, so we should probably wrap it up. Stephanie says, "I have read several articles that you shouldn't use your personal profile for business. Has that changed recently?" No. I think the short answer to that is no. But it's getting murkier, too. You know, we have a lot of clients that say, "I like going live on my personal profile, because I get way more engagement." But who's watching though? Mom and everyone that you went to high school with. So is it an accurate reflection of the engagement you're getting from your target audience or people who just love you? So ...

Angela: And I think there's rules against, like if you're posting things about your business on your personal page or sharing them to your personal page, that's when things ... but using your personal page solely for the purpose of business activities is frowned on. And if people complain about it, like maybe people who are maybe not so close friends, if they complain about it, Facebook can put you in jail or shut you down.

Scott: Yeah, I've thought about it quite a bit even this morning because of all these changes that are happening as far as using a personal profile and being a person and going live in a group. I think it probably is better and that probably is where Facebook is going to push people. And I've lost my train of thought. It was about going live. I don't know. Take over for a second.

Angela: Personal page, you were talking about personal pages.

Scott: Yeah.

Angela: Using your personal page and sharing business stuff is one thing, but using your personal page solely for the business ...

Scott: Oh, that's what it was, yeah.

Angela: ... like getting more engagement as a business.

Scott: Yeah, so you as a person are an expert. That's what we teach. So you could be going live on your page, but you don't need to be selling anything. And I think that's the key. That's what Facebook's looking out for. So if you're going live on your personal page as an expert, it's like, "I sell these products, or I provide this service." If you're just going live and you're just sharing free tips, which is what we teach, free value, you know, what free value can you give your target audience for free? No fees, no advertising or sales or anything. I think that is okay.

And then this is the trick then. So how do you then point those people in the direction of your website or ... I mean, you could say something as simple at the end of your videos like, you know, "To get more free tips, you can always check out my website. There's lots of stuff there." And then once they go to your website, you can be a little more salesy. Like you could have a newsletter they could sign up for or a landing page where they can get free product or whatever.

I haven't figured it out, but this is, I think what's going to happen over the next six months is people are going to be trying to figure this stuff out. And I think there's going to be way more emphasis put on real people and not businesses. But Ang already mentioned it several times today. You know, if you're not being salesy, you're not being ads driven, like if your videos and your posts don't look like ads, you're going to be okay. Boost those posts and do that kind of thing. What they really want to clamp down on is ads and the ads that are constantly interrupting people on Facebook, so.

Angela: Oh, I hope they stop that thing where you're watching a video and then you're interrupted with another video ad. I hope they stop doing that.

Scott: See, that doesn't happen to me. It happens to Ang, and I don't know why. I don't know if she fulfills some sort of demographic profile, but it doesn't ...

Angela: I probably do.

Scott: ... happen to my videos.

Angela: I watch Vanderpump Rules. I'm sure I break a bunch of demographic profiles that they target me. But before we go, if you're going to do business on your personal profile, remember you can't boost it. You can't do ads. You can't get statistics and know how your posts are doing. So that's a downside to doing that. That's why we tell people always to use your business page, because you want the data. You want to know what's working and what's not. Sometimes you want to be able to boost a post, especially if it's a short term thing and none of that is available on your personal page.

Scott: Yeah. Okay, we should wrap it up.

Angela: All right.

Scott: Just Melissa had one more comment that I'm just going to touch on. Thanks for being in the room, Melissa, and sharing some of your expertise. But yeah, for your personal profile, if you are your personal brand, and I remember debating this before when we off in this new venture, is people can follow you. They don't have to friend you on your personal page. So that is an option. But if you are a business, like a restaurant, you have employees or you're a bit bigger then obviously you have to use a page because if you set up a personal profile for a business, it's going to get nixed. Facebook will find out and they'll just kill it.

So anyway, that was great live today. Thanks everyone for engaging and we are ... I don't see anymore comments so we are going to wrap it up.

Angela: Awesome.

Scott: Thirty-one minutes, that's like my max ...

Angela: Yeah.

Scott: ... that I'm comfortable with a live. So we're going to wrap it up and we will see you all, hopefully, next Tuesday.

Angela: Yeah. Thanks everyone. And for those who are not watching live, feel free to chime in the comments below. If you know something that we don't know, please share it. The more that we can share and the more that we can help each other, the better. Have a great week, everyone.